EDITORIAL: Equality for the sake of equality
The Title IX committee met Thursday at the Board of Trustees meeting to update its progress toward adding women's sports to the athletics department at Central Michigan University.
This is the most recent update in a process to add two women’s sports to the Chippewa arsenal in order to continue compliance with Title IX, a portion of the Education Amendment of 1972 that promotes gender equality in sports. President Barack Obama's administration in 2010 instituted a stricter policy, forcing universities to adhere to stricter guidelines in remaining compliant with the NCAA when it came to gender equality.
And while gender equality is a recognized importance across the board, it’s important to look to the heart of this decision and what’s really fueling it.
Is there even a wide interest in women’s golf, swim, tennis or lacrosse, the likely sports to be added? What about women’s sand volleyball, equestrian or rugby, less popular sports nationally but looked at as possibilities?
Men's sports such as football, basketball and wrestling, and women's sports like basketball, soccer and volleyball have shown obvious interest over the years. And rightfully so, they tend to be the bread and butter of any major university athletics program. Athletic departments like CMU heavily rely on football and basketball to bring in revenue since they don't match revenue with the expenses necessary to keep them afloat.
Without them, the university subsidy for the $22-million budget would be even greater.
At this point in time, state funding is already down. In the 2010-11 fiscal year, CMU received $68.1 million in state appropriations, which was 20.4 percent of the budget; whereas for the 2011-12 fiscal year, $69.5 million -- only 15.8 percent of the total budget -- was received.
With state appropriations slowly decreasing, is it really that important to throw money into new sports?
With each CMU sports team comes money for scholarships, transportation, equipment, a coaching staff and, in most cases, a facility, among other expenses.
At this point, equality for equality seems to step on the toes of other areas that could use such funding, primarily educational areas.
Director of Athletics Dave Heeke said in January that the current budget of about $23 million would not be able to sustain another sport, leaving it up to the university to increase its subsidy to the department.
And while that will probably happen, in order to for the university to remain compliant at the behest of the federal government, it's likely going to take more dollars than we are using right now. Is that an investment we should be making right now?
